Priority goes to the Power Gem with higher elevation, so in your example the first case would be the correct result.

So after reading all of the other questions, and not really finding an answer to the one I had, I thought I'd ask it

In the context of Power Gems
What would the power gem look like in the following situation

  RRR
RRRRR
RRRRR

if the formed power gems look like

  S11
22S11
22S11

1's and 2's being the power gem id and the S's being single.
The explanation of the game mentioned how when power gems are formed, the higher elevation takes priority, and when a gem wants to 'grow' it tries to form a new power gem and then combine with others at the same level, but what if the gems are already formed, and there are 2 options for 'growing'?

Would the formation of power gems look like

  111
22111
22111

or

  S11
22211
22211

assuming they are the same color

Damn, now thats some optimization.

I picked the closest solution I had - mine. In fact, I improved my old and bad algorithm and managed to get a 2x increase in execution speed (tested with the same input as in the previous fork).

Ahh, I hadn't seen your solution, I was just looking at the ones that were rated best solution. But I knew my solution wouldnt have been BEST, but I'm glad to see your solution, hopefully it will help me with optimizing in the furute!

Not really. Tested on greater input values, your solution is degrading faster (press View Run Output, and you should see 2 collapsed blocks; open them and you'll see the execution time).

What language are you using?

I think they use 0 and . in the description because its easier to read, but the code works the same.
I think the reason for 0's and 1's are for the boolean true and false comparison someone could use in their code.
I mean, it still works, I got mine down to 651 ms.

Looking at the other solutions, mine seems to be faster than others.
Normally I'm struggling to make it in the time limit, I'm terrible at optimizing.
This was my first code to run faster than the other people I've looked at!

yes, the performance tests were completely wrong..... I corrected them, your solution should be marked as invalid soon.